Amy Tan

Amy Tan
Tan in 2007
Born	Amy Tan (1952-02-19) February 19, 1952 Oakland, California
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	American
Alma mater	San Jose State University bachelor's and master's degrees UC Santa Cruz & UC Berkeley doctoral
Notable works	The Joy Luck Club
Website
www.amytanauthor.com

Amy Tan
Traditional Chinese	譚恩美
Simplified Chinese	谭恩美
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Tán Ēnměi Yue: Cantonese Jyutping Taam4 Jan1mei5

Amy Tan (born February 19, 1952) is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships and the Chinese-American experience. Her best-known work is The Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages. In 1993, the book was adapted into a commercially successful film.

Tan has written several other bestselling novels, including The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetter's Daughter, Saving Fish from Drowning and The Valley of Amazement. She also wrote a collection of non-fiction essays entitled The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings. In addition to these, Tan has written two children's books: The Moon Lady (1992) and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat (1994), which was turned into an animated series which aired on PBS.

Personal life

Tan was born in Oakland, California. She is the second of three children born to Chinese immigrants Daisy (née Li) and John Tan, an electrical engineer and Baptist minister. When Tan was 15 years old, her older brother Peter and father both died of brain tumors within eight months of each other. Daisy moved Amy and her younger brother John Jr. to Switzerland, where Amy finished high school at the Institut Monte Rosa, Montreux. During this period in her life, Amy learned about her mother's former marriage to an abusive man in China, of their four children (a son who died as a toddler and three daughters), and how her mother was forced to leave her children from a previous marriage behind in Shanghai. This incident was the basis for Tan's first novel, 1989 New York Times bestseller The Joy Luck Club. In 1987 Amy traveled with Daisy to China. There, Amy met her three half-sisters.

Tan began her college days at Linfield College in Oregon before transferring to San Jose State University in California because she had fallen in love with Lou DeMattei, an Italian American, who she met on blind date and married in 1974. Tan received her bachelor's and master's degrees in English and linguistics from San Jose State and later did doctoral linguistics studies at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley. While in school, she worked odd jobs—switchboard operator, carhop, bartender, and pizza maker—before starting a writing career. As a freelance business writer, she worked on projects for AT&T, IBM, Bank of America, and Pacific Bell.

In 1998 Tan contracted Lyme disease, which went misdiagnosed for a few years. As a result, she suffers complications like epileptic seizures. Tan co-founded LymeAid 4 Kids, which helps uninsured children pay for treatment. She wrote about her life with Lyme disease in The New York Times.

She resides in Sausalito, California, with her tax attorney husband in a house they designed "to feel open and airy, like a tree house, but also to be a place where we could live comfortably into old age" with accessibility features. Tan is also in a band, the Rock Bottom Remainders, with several other prominent writers.

Work and themes

Tan's first novel was The Joy Luck Club, published in 1989, which became a best-seller. The novel consists of sixteen related stories about the experiences of four Chinese-American mother-daughter pairs.

In 1991, The Kitchen God's Wife was published. Tan's second novel was critically acclaimed and also focuses on the relationship between an immigrant Chinese mother and her American-born daughter.

The Hundred Secret Senses, published in 1995, was a departure from the first two novels, in focusing on the relationships between sisters. The Bonesetter's Daughter, Tan's fourth novel, tells the story of an immigrant Chinese woman and her American-born daughter.

Adaptations

Tan's work has been adapted into films and other media. The Joy Luck Club was adapted into a both a play and a film in 1993. The Bonesetter's Daughter was adapted into an opera in 2008. Tan's children's book Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat was adapted into a PBS animated television show.

Bibliography

Novels

• The Joy Luck Club (1989)
• The Kitchen God's Wife (1991)
• The Hundred Secret Senses (1995)
• The Bonesetter's Daughter (2000)
• Saving Fish from Drowning (2005)
• Rules for Virgins (2012; an excerpt from The Valley of Amazement)
• The Valley of Amazement (2013)

Children's books

• The Moon Lady, illustrated by Gretchen Schields (1992)
• Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat, illustrated by Gretchen Schields (1994)

Non-fiction

• Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America With Three Cords and an Attitude (with Dave Barry, Stephen King, Tabitha King, Barbara Kingsolver) (1994)
• Mother (with Maya Angelou, Mary Higgins Clark) (1996)
• The Best American Short Stories 1999 (Editor, with Katrina Kenison) (1999)
• The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2003, ISBN 9780399150746)
• Hard Listening, co-authored in July 2013, an interactive ebook about her participation in a writer/musician band, the Rock Bottom Remainders. Published by Coliloquy, LLC.

Awards

• 1989, Finalist National Book Award for The Joy Luck Club
• 1989, Finalist National Book Critics Circle Award for The Joy Luck Club
• Finalist Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize
• Bay Area Book Reviewers Award
• Commonwealth Gold Award
• American Library Association's Notable Books
• American Library Association's Best Book for Young Adults
• 2005-2006, Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature Honorable Mention for Saving Fish From Drowning
• The Joy Luck Club selected for the National Endowment for the Arts' Big Read
• New York Times Notable Book
• Booklist Editors Choice
• Finalist for the Orange Prize
• Nominated for the Orange Prize
• Nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
• Audie Award: Best Non-fiction, Abridged
• Parents' Choice Award, Best Television Program for Children
• Shortlisted British Academy of Film and Television Arts award, best screenplay adaptation
• Shortlisted WGA Award, best screenplay adaptation
• 1996, Academy of Achievement, Golden Plate Award

See also

• Chinese American literature

External links

• 'Reading in Reverse', review of The Opposite of Fate in the Oxonian Review
• *Teresa Miller television interview with Amy Tan (60 minutes)
• Interview with Amy Tan from the Academy of Achievement
• Amy Tan at Library of Congress Authorities, with 34 catalog records